Mustache
by meganechan720
Summary: Someone has found proof that Vegeta used to be a murderous alien, and he needs an image change, fast. "We could cut your hair… have you grow a mustache, something like that," the PR guy suggested. Vegeta gave him a flat stare. "That's a terrible idea."
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Vegeta looked down at his daughter, who was holding his hand. He didn't like the idea of using her in a publicity stunt, but it had to be done. He squeezed her hand gently and sent her a small, questioning telepathic nudge. She lifted her head, pinning him with her eyes, and then (though she had her mother's coloring, Bra was her father's daughter) walloped him on the meat of his thigh. Then she leaned her head on the spot where she had struck him and sent him an answering wave of love and assurance that hit him harder than the not insignificant blow. He gazed at her, drinking in the huge affection and love that he could hardly believe were directed at him.

The makeup girl cleared her throat uncomfortably, and he lifted his head and glared, though mostly just on principle. Then he released his daughter's hand and sat in the makeup chair like it was a throne, head held high, as though daring them to do their worst. The girl gulped, slowly drew a comb and a pair of scissors from her apron pockets, and advanced.

Vegeta did not close his eyes, but he kept his concentration on his daughter, playing peacefully nearby. It was the only way he was going to get through this.


	2. Part 1

**Part 1**

Vegeta scowled at the door. He was not hesitating. He never hesitated. But it took a few moments before he reached out and turned the handle.

The man inside stood up from his desk and came around to Vegeta, extending his hand to be shaken.

"Ah, Mr. Briefs, thank you for coming." His curly, light brown hair formed a ring around the bald dome of his head, and he had the soft body of someone who worked at a desk for a living. Vegeta did not offer his hand in return. The man's polite smile faded, but did not disappear. He dropped his hand.

"You will explain what it is the woman has decided is so important and then I will leave," Vegeta informed him. The man blinked, the rest of his smile falling off his face. In its place, for a tiny moment, Vegeta could see something that looked like annoyance—no, _hatred_. Then the polite façade was back.

"Of course, you're a busy man, so I'll get right to the point." He strode back to his desk, sitting down in his high-backed chair without offering Vegeta a seat. Vegeta recognized the slight, and filed it away next to the flash of hatred he had seen. He would have refused to sit anyway. Humans did not seem to consciously understand the subtle language of physical positioning and eye contact; with his head higher than the other man's, he was in a position of dominance, and though the human doubtless thought sitting in his fancy chair was some kind of display of power, the more primal side of him would understand who had the upper hand, and it would make him uncomfortable.

"Not very many people know where you come from, Mr. Briefs," the man said, not getting to the point, and in fact seeming to try (and fail) at being somewhat threatening. Vegeta would have laughed if he wasn't so curious as to what this was all about, both Bulma's insistence that he come here, and the man's disproportionate dislike of him. "I myself only know what the rumors say. But rumors can be a force to be reckoned with, Mr. Briefs."

Didn't he know it. Gossip had been as powerful a weapon on Freeza's ship as any ki blast or physical blow, and it was a weapon he had both wielded and had wielded against him. But he did not care what humans thought of him, and this man before him was in charge of Public Relations: a professional dealer of gossip, from what he'd been able to understand. His job was to minimize bad rumors and spread good ones.

"If there are unpleasant rumors being spread about me, then do your job and deal with them," he rumbled, knowing full well that was hardly the reason his wife had been so subdued and troubled this morning as she hugged him and told him to go see Charlie. Charlie shifted uncomfortably in his seat, sitting up a little straighter. Vegeta hid a smirk.

"If we were merely dealing with rumors, Mr. Briefs, that would be a simple matter and I could, as you say, simply do my job and deal with them. But what we are facing here is something much worse than mere speculation; we are looking at actual proof."

Proof. Vegeta's mind spun. Proof of… of his origins? What kind of proof could that be? Simply being from outer space wouldn't have made Bulma look so sad. Proof, then, of his former occupation. But how could someone have gathered such proof? He scowled suspiciously at Charlie.

"What do you mean?" he growled. Charlie twitched at the low grumble of his voice, and covered his discomfort by picking up a small remote and toying with it.

"The official story is that you came to live at Capsule Corp. close to 23 years ago, that you and Mrs. Briefs fell in love and had a child, and that you stayed to raise said child and eventually married Mrs. Briefs and had a second child. Your past before that is painful for you to talk about and so you don't, despite the many hundreds of thousands of reporters and stockholders who would love to know where you came from and how you ended up married to the most powerful woman in the world."

Vegeta glared. He was aware of all of this; he paid little attention to the dealings of most humans, but he knew better than to ignore Bulma when she thought something was important, and some time ago she had informed him of Capsule Corp.'s 'official' story regarding him and how he had come to stay with her. He had acquiesced, mostly because it cost him nothing to do so, and partly because he agreed that it would be more convenient if humans asked fewer questions. She had put the date of his arrival scarcely more than nine months before Trunks was born to distance him from the memory, then still somewhat fresh, of the destruction of South City. She had assured him, though at the time he did not care, that all video evidence of his involvement in that event had been destroyed, most of it by Nappa himself.

South City. And the battle that came shortly after, also recorded by TV cameras, most of which had been destroyed. What if… Vegeta uncrossed his arms in alarm. What if not all the video evidence had been destroyed? Was that the proof Charlie was talking about? His glare deepened, and he re-crossed his arms.

"And you say there is now proof that this story is false?" he demanded.

"Y-yes," Charlie said, putting the remote down with a loud clack. He turned his chair so that he was square with his desk and folded his hands neatly on the polished surface in front of him, obviously attempting to settle himself. "As you may be aware, the 25th anniversary of the destruction of South City is coming up in about eight months, and the commemoration promises to be huge event. The lack of hard evidence about what exactly happened there is being scrutinized again, and the government is attempting to help its current dismal ratings in the polls by sponsoring a search for said evidence."

"And they have found some," Vegeta said, voice flat. Charlie nodded.

"An enterprising young reporter thought to look in people's homes for video recordings of the event, taken from the live TV coverage. For the most part the shots were of the larger man, but there is apparently one, somewhat clear image of… someone who looks remarkably like you, obviously in collusion with the giant everyone remembers as the perpetrator." Charlie, perhaps sensing Vegeta's growing unease, leaned forward and pierced him with a hard gaze. It was, Vegeta supposed, only his body that was soft and weak.

"Let us be frank with each other, Mr. Briefs," he said, gaze not wavering. "That was you, wasn't it. You were one of the alleged aliens that destroyed South City."

The man's voice was as devoid of emotion as he could make it, but Vegeta could hear the hatred bordering on triumph underneath the coldness. Why had Bulma asked him to come here? Hadn't she told him Charlie would help? Vegeta had long ago given up the notion that physical strength was the only kind of strength that mattered. His own wife was proof of that, and he was aware, maddeningly, of the power this man held over him. All it would take was for Charlie to do his job with less than his full faculties, and he could bring the hatred of the entire world down on Vegeta's head, and by extension, his family. Though none of the people on this planet could offer any physical hurt to himself and his offspring, the damage such scrutiny could do was enormous, and his mind shied away from imagining it.

His throat was stuck closed, but he forced it open to say, "Yes."

There—a tightening of the fists, a twitch of the facial muscles into a grimace of hate. Charlie hid it well, but Vegeta's admission angered and distressed him. The two men remained in silence for nearly a full minute as Charlie struggled to keep his emotions in check. Eventually he stood, allowing a frown to overtake his face and stay there.

"Mrs. Briefs doesn't know this," he began, and Vegeta braced himself. "But I had family in South City. My brother and his wife and their children. All of them lived right in the blast zone. It was three weeks before they could contact the outside world to tell us they were alright, that they'd been out sightseeing on the coast and didn't get caught in the explosion." Vegeta closed his eyes. Charlie went on, voice tight and low. "For three weeks I had to live with the knowledge that half of my family was gone. It was another month before the rest of the world could breathe again. You see, you and your… partner just up and disappeared. No one knew if you were going to come back and finish what you started. When the government reported that both of you had been dealt with, we all wanted to believe it, even though the facts were all so sketchy. People just wanted to forget, but now…now they're starting to remember."

"What do you want from me?" Vegeta rumbled, his voice so low he wondered if he'd have to repeat himself. Charlie studied him, his light blue eyes somehow dark.

"I've worked for this company for fifteen years. I've gotten to know the Briefs— especially Dr. Briefs—very well. He was a good man, but very…eccentric. I don't have any doubt that he was quite capable of ignoring the destruction you caused in favor of… what, I don't know." Charlie gestured sharply in harsh amusement. "The opportunity to build some invention for you, or inspired by you. Now that I think about it, those rumors that he was housing a family of green men from Mars were probably true, or close to it." He gave a dark chuckle. Vegeta waited. "What I'm trying to say is, the fact that Dr. Briefs seemed to accept you doesn't really count for much in my book, but Bulma… Mrs. Briefs, I mean. Well, I just can't reconcile it." Charlie shook his head in bewilderment, and Vegeta allowed a tiny sliver of tension to flow out of his stance. "She's as intelligent as her father but with far more common sense. I can believe her taking in a genocidal alien on a whim, but having his child and marrying him…" Charlie shook his head again. Then he looked up at Vegeta, something like curiosity in his eyes now. Vegeta was holding very still, in part because he didn't want to know which instinct would win out should he allow himself to move: the instinct to flee, or the instinct to explode.

"And then there's you." Charlie sat down again, drained. "I don't know you at all, but I've seen the way the people over in R&D talk about you; they're all half terrified, half in love with you. It's bizarre. And your children—especially Bra. They both love you unconditionally. Your wife talks about you like you're a wild animal half the time, but then she'll trail off and get this look on her face…" Charlie shook his head once again, as though attempting to rattle something out of it. "I can't reconcile it."

Slowly, Vegeta sat.

"A lot has happened in the last twenty-five years," he said to the floor. A long silence stretched during which he did not look up, but then the creak of Charlie sitting back in his chair made him lift his eyes.

"I just want to know one thing," Charlie said, looking as drained as Vegeta felt. "Are you still…like that? Are you just biding your time here, waiting to finish what you started?"

Vegeta straightened to his full height and fixed Charlie with a black stare.

"I would bathe my hands in blood in a heartbeat to protect my family," he said, and let that hang in the air for a moment. Then he slumped again. "But all things considered I'm glad I don't have to."

There was another silence, shorter than the last one, broken this time by Charlie standing up swiftly and clapping his hands.

"Well, it looks like I've got my work cut out for me, then," he said cheerfully. Vegeta thought he was absolutely right.


	3. Part 2

**Part 2**

Vegeta stood up from the chair, bits of hair sticking maddeningly in his shirt. He'd have to take a shower after this; haircuts were disgusting—

He saw himself in the mirror and blanched. His mustache was already coming in, and with the distinctive peak of his hair now gone, he looked like a completely different person. Worse, he no longer looked like a warrior. He looked like—

"You look like a geek," Trunks said, walking into the room with a soda in one hand. Bra was staring up at her father from her position on the floor, surrounded by blocks and toy dinosaurs scattered in a childish parody of a massacre. Vegeta felt distant; he wondered if he was having an out of body experience.

"Dad?" Trunks said, sounding worried now. "Look, wasn't that the point? To make you look like a harmless nerd? It doesn't mean you _are_ one—"

"Shut up," Vegeta snapped, regaining some of his composure. He continued to stare at himself, rubbing his face and watching the answering movement in the reflection. Bra came and held his hand, and he gripped her fingers tightly.

* * *

"The best lies are always composed mostly of the truth," Charlie said, looking fresh and chipper. Vegeta, subdued, shrugged.

"I know that," he said without much ire. Their first meeting had been so draining that he had scheduled their next appointment for two days hence, instead of the next day. As it was, Charlie still put him on edge, though Charlie himself seemed energized by the sheer breadth of the project he had been assigned.

"Okay, so, that's where we start. The truth." Charlie studied him, eyes piercing. "What _is_ the truth, Mr. Briefs?"

Damn. So that's what he was getting at.

"I'm not going to sit here and tell you my life story," he protested.

"You don't need to go into detail, sure," Charlie allowed. "But I need to have something to work with. Let's start with where you were born."

Vegeta growled and paced over to the window. He really didn't want to do this. But they were on a deadline; as a favor to Mr. Satan, good friend of one Vegeta Briefs, the government had agreed to wait for the unveiling of the video until the anniversary of the attack, which gave them just under eight months to completely change his image and get the new one stuck in people's heads before the storm broke. The young reporter, currently being held in protective custody, had made copies of the video, squirreled away to places unknown, to be released upon news of his death or the anniversary of the attack, whichever came sooner. There was nothing to do but prepare for the inevitable.

"My home planet was destroyed when I was five years old," he said harshly, gathering his emotions together and placing them in a small box, to be dealt with later—or never. "Only myself, my guardian Nappa, and some third-class teenager named Raditz survived. We all worked for the being responsible until I came to Earth; shortly after those events he was killed and I have lived here ever since."

"Why did you work for the guy that blew up your home planet?" Charlie said after a short pause.

"There was nowhere else to go. Besides, we didn't know, at first, that he was the one who had done it; by the time I found out, it was apparent that not only could I never beat him, but he was never going to let me go until he killed me."

Too much, too much. He stopped speaking and let his eyes track the hypnotic flow of traffic in the city outside. He heard the scratching of Charlie's pen, and then, a few minutes later, his voice.

"You're a prince, right? I've heard that much—so you were a prince in a foreign land, a little kingdom no one's ever heard of over in the East—people will buy that, no one knows what goes on out there—that got taken over by some other warlord who forced you to work for him—we might even use the word slavery, though that might incite a little too much sympathetic anger; we don't want people rallying to some cause that doesn't exist. So you work for this warlord, who isn't very nice, and then you manage to escape and find your way here. Then what?"

He was letting the truth guide the lie. Vegeta, distantly, approved.

"Then I was forced to join forces with those idiots the woman spends her time with to save the world from—oh, numerous threats. She gave me a place to stay and I repaid her kindness by leaving her alone, with child. For some reason she took me back and eventually I grew… fond of her and the boy."

"You meet Mrs. Briefs through some mutual friends, she is sympathetic," Charlie muttered as he wrote furiously, "she takes you in and you fall in love and start a family, and you've been living here ever since. Now," he said in a more business-like tone, "Do we come out with the 'real' story before the video breaks, or wait for it to happen?"

"Who would want to side with some punk poking his nose into another man's painful past?" Vegeta said with a sad smirk. "I was living quite peacefully, able to forget my horrific childhood, until I was accused of not only being from outer space, but also responsible for the deaths of millions of people. It's criminal, the way people think they can point fingers at innocent people just to get ratings."

Charlie laughed.

"You're good," he chuckled. "This might be a piece of cake after all."


	4. Part 3

**Part 3**

It was a sunny fall day, very picturesque, Charlie said, perfect for a little family outing in the park.

Vegeta shook his head slightly, feeling the unnerving sensation of significantly less weight on his head moving in response. He adjusted his khaki pants uncomfortably; the damn things were too loose and they kept rubbing his legs every time he moved. Bra took her father's hand as he was about to lose his temper and smiled up at him. He smiled back down, but then snapped his head up in a frown as he heard a click.

"Sorry," Charlie said, as the unfortunate photographer next to him blanched. "Just wanted a few shots of our own."

He growled, but softly, and looked over at Bulma, who was wearing a sundress and conservative heels. She smiled back at him.

"Ready, big guy?" she teased. Vegeta could just _hear_ Trunks roll his eyes behind him.

"We're just going on a walk through the park, not through a warzone," he complained, pulling at his polo shirt, which was what they'd ended up compromising with when he refused to wear a button-up shirt.

"That's what you think," Vegeta muttered darkly. Bra let go of his hand and twirled in her dress for the photographer, who melted and snapped shot after shot of the little girl.

"Ready, everyone?" Charlie asked. He looked at Vegeta, hair shorn, face mustachioed, clothes conservative and boring. Even his scowl looked less intimidating now. It was almost a shame, he thought, to take such wildness and tame it, but then, he thought, as he watched Vegeta watching Bra, the man had really been tamed years ago. He was just making sure the public knew it.

"Alright," he called. "Let's go!"


End file.
